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110-729: The Workingmen's Party of the United States was established in August 1876 and renamed itself as the Socialist Labor Party of America at its National Congress in Newark, New Jersey a year later. The members of the organization were predominantly immigrants from Germany throughout its earliest years, although the SLP did maintain 7 English-speaking Sections by the end of 1877. Bolting trade union -oriented Marxists established

220-471: A New York Times reporter that: I have always attacked Kaiserism. I attacked the German Kaiser and his militarism in 1913 when The New York Times was praising him. I am not a pacifist. I am a fighter, and my ancestors fought in the civil war. Just now, however, I believe it most important for me personally to fight capitalism and Kaiserism in this country. The Call was forced to make do for

330-535: A trade union orientation. In April 1876, a preliminary conference took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania bringing together representatives of the union-oriented "Internationalists" and the electorally oriented " Lassalleans ". The gathering agreed to issue a call for a Unity Congress to be held in July to establish a new political party. On Saturday, July 15, 1876, delegates from the remaining American sections of

440-532: A "newspaper of record," the publication was never a circulation powerhouse in the vein of J.A. Wayland's Appeal to Reason . In 1916, with Socialist Party membership waning from its peak four years earlier, circulation of the New York Call stood at an unimpressive 15,000 copies per issue — less than half of the average circulation of the Milwaukee Leader. Fundraising to support the cost of

550-448: A 1919 novel by Upton Sinclair , Jimmie Higgins: A Story. Whittaker Chambers refers to himself using that term in his 1952 memoir: One day, shortly after we had met, Sam Krieger proposed that I should do "Jimmie Higgins work." He explained to me patiently that Jimmie Higgins is a character in one of Upton Sinclair's novels or stories with a passion for lowly jobs. I shared no such passion, but I readily agreed, for I wanted to know

660-409: A New York City newspaper, featuring news of the city and the world at the front of the paper, editorial comment and news of party affairs towards the back. The paper featured a "Women's Department" overseen by the high-profile activist wife of a "millionaire Socialist," Rose Pastor Stokes . Editorial cartoons were given a prominent place, with material contributed by Ryan Walker and others. One of

770-520: A bitter internal struggle between Marxists, who supported trade union organization as preliminary to workers' revolution and anarchists, led by Mikhail Bakunin , who advocated the immediate revolutionary overthrow of organized government. In 1874, the members of the American-based International, led by cigarmaker Adolph Strasser and carpenter Peter J. McGuire joined forces with socialists from Newark and Philadelphia to form

880-499: A daily newspaper proved an ongoing battle for New York City Socialists, with future member of the SPA's National Executive Committee Anna A. Maley given a full-time job as fundraiser for the publication. Throughout its history proved essential for the Call to raise additional operating revenue supplementary to the funds generated by newsstand sales and advertising. The Call was very much

990-720: A decision made in September of that year at a national conference of the organization held at party headquarters in New York City , despite the fact that the SLP's platform called for the abolition of the offices of President and Vice President. A pro-forma nominating convention was held in New York City in August, attended by just 8 delegates, at which candidates were named and a platform approved. The party's ticket, featuring Boston camera manufacturer Simon Wing and New York electrician Charles H. Matchett , appeared on

1100-679: A fair was held for the benefit of the Volkszeitung, raising several thousand dollars over a four-day period so in the fall of 1902 the WCPA decided to repeat this idea to raise funds for the English daily the next spring. The fair was held in March 1903; during its 16-day duration a linotype machine was put into action as a practical demonstration and a sample newspaper called the Daily Globe

1210-611: A new organization called the Socialist Party of America . The first two decades of the 20th century proved to be the period of greatest political influence for The People. In conjunction with the SLP's publishing house, the New York Labor News Company , an array of Marxist articles and pamphlets saw print, including the first American publication of Marx's Critique of the Gotha Program in

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1320-547: A new weekly, to be called The New Leader in memory of the recently terminated daily. James Oneal , a former member of the New York Call staff, was made editor of this new publication. A complete run of the New York Call is available via master negative microfilm from the New York Public Library in New York City. The papers of the Workingmen's Co-operative Publishing Association are held by

1430-607: A newspaper called The Labor Standard in 1877, although no official English-language publication existed until the governing National Executive Committee established The National Socialist in Cincinnati, Ohio in May 1878. This publication was in existence only a short time before budgetary concerns forced its abrupt termination, with a Chicago newspaper called The Socialist emerging as the main English-language organ of

1540-460: A newspaper, the Workingmen's Co-operative Publishing Association (WCPA), with a goal of publishing an English daily as soon as a fund of $ 50,000 was accumulated for the task. After a search, Julius Gerber managed to locate six surviving members of the old WCPA who remained interested in starting a new socialist newspaper were located and the organization was thus relaunched on its new task. Fundraising proved neither quick nor easy. In November 1901

1650-501: A period of organizational dualism, in which two groups both claimed for themselves the mantle of the Socialist Labor Party, each with their own officers and their own official English-language newspaper called The People. The paper changed to a daily frequency in 1900, thereby becoming The Daily People, ultimately reverting to the previous name in 1914 when financial concerns forced a retreat to weekly status. This name

1760-547: A polarizing figure among the SLP's membership during his editorial tenure as historian Howard Quint notes: Even De Leon's opponents were usually willing to concede that he possessed a tremendous intellectual grasp of Marxism. Those who had suffered under his editorial lashings looked on him as an unmitigated scoundrel who took fiendish delight in character assassination , vituperation, and scurrility. But most of De Leon's contemporaries, and especially his critics, misunderstood him, just as he himself lacked understanding of people. He

1870-499: A second four-year term of office behind the slogan "He Kept Us Out of War", asked Congress for a declaration of war against imperial Germany . That same month, with emotions running high, elected delegates of the Socialist Party of America gathered at their 1917 Emergency National Convention to determine party policy on the war. The organization reaffirmed its staunchly anti-militarist stance, declaring its opposition to

1980-454: A series called Socialist Studies from 1981 to 1983 The series was inaugurated in 1981. Many of the titles in the series were articles reprinted from the SLP's official journal, The People . The series titles are: 1981 1982 1983 Unknown Socialist Labor Party of America Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary The Socialist Labor Party ( SLP )

2090-569: Is a political party in the United States . It was established in 1876, and was the first socialist party formed in the country. Originally known as the Workingmen's Party of the United States , the party changed its name in 1877 to Socialistic Labor Party and again sometime in the late 1880s to Socialist Labor Party. The party was additionally known in some states as the Industrial Party or Industrial Government Party . In 1890,

2200-677: The New Yorker Volkszeitung . In addition to personal antipathy, the two sides differed on the fundamental question of trade union policy, with the DeLeon faction favoring a continuation of the party's policy of establishing an explicitly socialist union organization and the dissidents seeking to abandon the course of dual unionism so that closer relations to the established unions of the American Federation of Labor could be forged. A bitter split had ensued, with

2310-753: The Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia, but were generally supportive of the Russian Revolution in its earliest phase. As with The Jewish Daily Forward , later a bastion of anti-communism in the Socialist Party, The Call was not severely critical of V.I. Lenin , Leon Trotsky and their regime until after the end of the Russian Civil War and the destruction of the internal left wing political opposition in 1921. As historian Theodore Draper noted: "Many months after it happened,

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2420-545: The Chicago Daily Socialist (1906–1912) and preceding the Milwaukee Leader (1911–1938). In 1899 a bitter factional fight swept the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP), pitting loyalists to the party's English-language newspaper, The People , and its intense and autocratic editor, Daniel DeLeon , against a dissident faction organized around the party's German-language paper,

2530-580: The Hudson County, New Jersey ( Jersey City ) Central Labor Federation were covered in detail under the recurring headline "Parliaments of Labor". The doings of individual unions in the New York area and around the world were similarly covered in short summary. Despite its active role as cheerleader and publicist, the SLP was unable to exert any sort of real influence in the Knights of Labor until it

2640-555: The Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party as part of an International Workingmen's Association . The official organ of this short-lived splinter group was a newspaper called The Anarchist . In 1882, Johann Most , a former German Social Democrat turned Anarchist firebrand, came to the United States, further fueling the growth and militancy of the American anarchist movement. The SLP further divided

2750-553: The Socialist Party of America . After his death in 1914, De Leon was followed as national secretary by Arnold Petersen . Critical of both the Soviet Union and the reformist wing of the Socialist Party of America, the SLP became increasingly isolated from the majority of the American Left . Its support increased in the 1950s and into the early 1960s, when Eric Hass was influential in the party, but slightly declined in

2860-477: The Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance . The organization's division over the matter converged around the party press, with The People and the SLP's official German paper, Vorwärts, filled with attacks upon so-called "pure and simple labor unions" and their allegedly corrupt officers. An Anti-DeLeon "opposition faction" headed by Morris Hillquit and Henry Slobodin emerged, grouping themselves around

2970-609: The South American island of Curaçao , De Leon had been resident in the United States for 18 years before he began to play a leading role in the American socialist movement. De Leon attended a Gymnasium in Hildesheim, Germany in the 1860s before studying at the University of Leyden , from which he graduated in 1872 at the age of 20. De Leon was a brilliant student—well versed in history, philosophy and mathematics. He

3080-541: The United Labor Party to support Single Tax advocate Henry George in the 1886 New York City mayoral election . The party remained almost completely separated from the English-speaking workers movement and longing for leaders who could traverse the seemingly insurmountable language barrier which limited the organization to a sort of Teutonic ghetto. Throughout the decade of the 1880s, the SLP

3190-400: The University of Kansas . This balloting was won by Hass, who thereby became the 5th official editor of The People. In the subsequent three decades, the publication maintained a relatively stable weekly circulation, hitting a low of 9,000 in 1925 to a high of 11,450 in 1945, including individual subscriptions and bundle orders for free distribution. As the membership of the SLP declined in

3300-741: The party from the ground up. I began with the Daily Worker , but not on its editorial staff... He set me to doing the task that nobody else would do— newsstand collections for the Daily Worker . The Call also provided substantial original coverage of various labor disputes, such as the New York shirtwaist strike of 1909 and disasters such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 . In April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson , who had recently won re-election to

3410-462: The 1886 workers' campaign for the Eight-Hour Day and the brutal excesses of the police which came with it. De Leon was on the committee which nominated Henry George to run for Mayor in that same year and he spoke in public several times on George's behalf during the course of the campaign. De Leon participated in the first Nationalist Club in New York City, a group dedicated to advancing

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3520-582: The Bolshevik revolution in its own image. It could make itself believe that the Soviets were merely Russian equivalents of 'industrial socialism' or ' industrial unionism '..." Only in its last years, well after the 1919 departure of the Left Wing Section of the Socialist Party to establish the nascent American Communist movement, would the Call become consistently critical of the excesses of

3630-629: The Bolshevik revolution was still a very hazy and contradictory phenomenon. It was not simple and clear even to the participants. In its first stage, the Bolshevik regime consisted of a coalition between the Bolsheviks, the Left Socialist Revolutionaries , and minor groups. Long-time Marxists and anarchists pulled together against the common enemy... "Thus it was possible for the American Left Wing to see

3740-528: The European war and American participation in it. In June 1917, as part of the move of the United States government to military conscription , so-called " Espionage Act " legislation was passed making the obstruction of military recruitment a crime. Mere opposition to the American war effort via public speech or the printed word was interpreted by the Wilson Administration, and affirmed by

3850-664: The First International gathered in Philadelphia and disbanded that organization. The following Wednesday, July 19, the planned Unity Congress was convened, attended by seven delegates claiming to represent a membership of 3,000 in four organizations: the trade union-oriented Marxists of the now-disbanded International, and three Lassallean groups—the Workingmen's Party of Illinois, the Social Political Workingmen's Society of Cincinnati and

3960-579: The German-speaking newspaper editor August Spies , began to develop early in the 1880s, with the split formalized by 1883, a year in which the SLP and the IWPA held competing conventions in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, respectively. At its December 1883 Baltimore Convention, the SLP made a vain effort at reestablishing organizational unity with the IWPA, adopting a particularly radical "proclamation" in

4070-638: The Russian Communist Party. By the early 1920s the Socialist Party was in severe membership decline and funding of the New York Call became correspondingly tenuous. In a last-ditch effort to save the paper, it was reorganized in the fall of 1923 to include non-Socialists in its management. On October 1, 1923, the name of the paper was formally changed to the New York Leader as a reflection of this new orientation and pacifist minister Norman Thomas , formerly of The World Tomorrow ,

4180-500: The SLP came under the influence of Daniel De Leon , who used his role as editor of The Weekly People , the SLP's English-language official organ, to expand the party's popularity beyond its then largely German-speaking membership. Despite his accomplishments, De Leon was a polarizing figure among the SLP's membership. In 1899, his opponents left the SLP and merged with the Social Democratic Party of America to form

4290-430: The SLP consisted of 30 sections and two years later it had doubled. Three new privately owned English-language newspapers were briefly established, although none could achieve the critical mass of subscribers and advertising revenue necessary for survival. The SLP attempted to again make a foray into American electoral politics despite its still heavily German composition, joining forces with other labor organization into

4400-456: The SLP's rank-and-file membership, even exceeding that of the nominal political chiefs of the organization. As the decade of the 1890s progressed, the Socialist Labor Party became deeply divided over the relationship of the party to the trade union movement, with Daniel DeLeon and his co-thinkers supportive of dual unionism through the SLP's 1896 establishment of a socialist rival to the American Federation of Labor and Knights of Labor called

4510-544: The Social Labor Movement , appeared monthly from Detroit in the shadow of the powerful Chicago German-language radical press until it was finally discontinued altogether at the end of 1883. The party was so thoroughly German that it published the stenographic proceedings of its 1884 and 1885 National Conventions only in that language. From 1885, the official organ of the party was a German-language weekly, Der Sozialist . No English-language SLP organ existed from

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4620-791: The Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America. The organization formed by this Unity Convention was known as the Workingmen's Party of the United States (WPUS), and the native English-speaking Philip Van Patten was elected as the party's first "Corresponding Secretary", the official in charge of the day-to-day operations of the party. A number of socialist newspapers also emerged around this time, all privately owned, including Paul Grottkau 's Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung , Joseph Brucker's Milwaukee Socialist and an English-language weekly also published in Milwaukee called The Emancipator. German émigrés dominated

4730-521: The Supreme Court ruled against them in Presser v. Illinois . The anarchist movement expanded rapidly with the debate over tactics between the electorally -oriented socialists and the direct action -oriented anarchists becoming ever more bitter. The 1881 SLP Convention in New York saw some of the party's anarchist members and one New York section split from the party to form a new party called

4840-409: The ballot in just six states and drew a total of 21,512 votes. The number of votes gathered by the SLP ticket in 1892 constituted 0.18% of the national presidential vote that year. In percentage terms, the next two presidential elections of 1896 and 1900 were the most successful for the party as the SLP presidential candidate Charles H. Matchett received 0.26% of the national popular vote in 1896 and

4950-547: The best and the brightest of the German-American socialist movement, including Alexander Jonas , Adolph Douai , and Sergei Shevitch and Herman Schlüter ; and quickly emerged as the leading voice of the SLP during the last decades of the 19th century. About this same time, the American anarchist movement gained strength, fueled by the economic crisis and strike wave of 1877. As socialist Frederic Heath recounted in 1900: The line between Anarchism and Socialism

5060-529: The bills with a job teaching Latin, Greek and math at a school in Westchester, New York . This teaching job enabled De Leon to finance his further education at Columbia Law School , from which he graduated with honors in 1878. Thereafter, De Leon moved to Texas , where he practiced law for a time before returning to Columbia University in 1883 to take a position as a lecturer on Latin American diplomacy. De Leon seems to have been further politicized by

5170-715: The birth of the Daily Call was necessarily postponed. While another successful fundraising fair was held in 1905, a growing range of new projects among New York Socialists, including the Rand School of Social Science , the Intercollegiate Socialist Society , the Christian Socialist Fellowship , and New York City elections in 1907 robbed the project to establish a daily Socialist newspaper of active supporters. By

5280-470: The combined political and industrial action of the working class organized in industrial unions . In 1872, the International , a European-based international organization for a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade union organizations, moved its headquarters to New York City. It was in a weakened and disorganized state, having recently suffered

5390-495: The contributions to the paper of lasting impact was a short story written by New York Socialist Ben Hanford in 1909, at a time when he was dying of cancer. The story, " Jimmie Higgins ," was a salute to the rank-and-file Socialist everyman, a committed volunteer who loyally performed the myriad of unpublicized and unglamorous laborious tasks that were essential to the successful functioning of any political organization. The Higgins character proved enduring, being further immortalized in

5500-459: The courts, as a violation of the law and a wave of prosecutions and administrative actions followed, including action by Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson to ban offending newspapers from the mail. Mailing privileges of the New York Call were quickly revoked as part of a general offensive against the Socialist Party's press. Charles Ervin, managing editor of the Call during this period, decided that, beginning on Monday, December 3, 1917,

5610-668: The demise of the Bulletin in 1883 to the establishment of the Workingmen's Advocate in 1886. The party's membership situation was so dismal that the English-speaking Corresponding Secretary of the organization, Philip Van Patten, left a suicide note in April 1883 and mysteriously disappeared. He later surfaced as a government employee, a socialist oppositionist no more. Membership in the organization atrophied to just 1,500 by 1883. What growth there

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5720-488: The desired nest egg of $ 50,000 had been accumulated. The fair proved a financial success, the proposed May Day launch of the Call was moved back to Memorial Day , and the daily newspaper was born. On May 30, 1908, the new socialist daily newspaper was launched — the New York Call. While the Yiddish-language and German-language socialists of New York City had long had daily newspapers of their own, The Call

5830-616: The dissident wing — pejoratively called "Kangaroos" by the DeLeonist SLP Regulars — attempting to appropriate the name of the organization and its English-language newspaper for themselves. The matter ended up in the courts, with SLP Executive Secretary Henry Kuhn, Daniel DeLeon, and the Regulars victorious in the legal battle. The losers were forced by the court to change their name and the name of their publication so that no electoral or commercial confusion would result from

5940-696: The duration of the war primarily with door-to-door sales by carriers and at newsstands . The paper did not have its second-class mailing privileges restored until June 1921. With the advent of the Bolshevik Revolution in the fall of 1917, the Call was taken by surprise. On December 26, 1917, the paper editorialized that events in Russia had "got clean away from us" and that the editors could "make nothing of it at present, nor predicate anything for its future from present reports." The paper made its columns available both to supporters and critics of

6050-485: The early editorial and writing staff included W. J. Ghent , Louis Kopelin, and Algernon Lee . At the end of October 1908, nationally famous muckraking journalist Charles Edward Russell was brought aboard as associate editor, having recently joined the Socialist Party. The Call became the second English-language socialist daily in America, following the Chicago Daily Socialist, established in 1906, but preceding

6160-749: The election of two aldermen in St. Louis, four aldermen in Chicago, three members in the Illinois House of Representatives , three members in the Missouri General Assembly , and one member in the Illinois Senate . Ernst Schmidt , their nominee in the 1879 Chicago mayoral election , received over 20% of the vote. The SLP suffered its first split in 1878. Members who were displeased with the exclusively political actionist turn of

6270-440: The ephemeral Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America , the first Marxist political party in the United States. Despite these organizational efforts, the socialist movement in America remained deeply divided over tactics. German immigrants preferred the parliamentary approach employed by Ferdinand Lassalle and the fledgling Social Democratic Party of Germany while longer-term residents of America usually supported

6380-439: The factional dualism. On April 28, 1901, the losing side in the litigation, the so-called "Socialist Labor Party" headquartered in Rochester, New York , headed by Henry Slobodin , relaunched their weekly New York City newspaper with a new name — The Worker. Old numbering used previously for their version of The People was carried forward, with the first issued under the new banner designated "Volume 11, Number 4." The paper

6490-441: The fall of 1907, the number of people actively working on the project of establishing a daily paper was down to just six people, including future chief of the New York organization Julius Gerber and past National Executive Secretary of the Springfield wing of the Social Democratic Party William Butscher. A decision was made to hold one more fundraising fair and then to launch the paper on May Day , 1908, regardless of whether or not

6600-454: The first party-owned English weekly since termination of The National Socialist. The large broadsheet was produced on the press owned by the association which published the Volkszeitung and Sunday was initially chosen as the weekly publication day. First editor of the publication was Lucien Sanial (1835–1927), a French-born veteran of the socialist movement. Sanial was soon shunted aside however, resigning as editor in 1892 to make way for

6710-473: The first time in the New York elections of 1886, in which it put forward a full ticket headed by J. Edward Hall as its gubernatorial nominee and Alexander Jonas as its candidate for Mayor of New York . Fewer than 3,000 votes were cast for this ticket throughout the entire state of New York, a result so disheartening that the German language party paper the New Yorker Volkszeitung and some prominent party leaders advocated abandonment of electoral campaigns for

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6820-452: The forthcoming publication and the Daily Call was decided upon, with a launch date of September 1, 1904, targeted. The WCPA and its project lost its fundraising mojo, however, owing to the excitement and expense of the 1904 Presidential campaign of Eugene V. Debs and New York Socialist Party stalwart Ben Hanford . By the end of June it had become clear that the drive to raise even the more modest sum of $ 35,000 would be met in failure and

6930-415: The greater part of the New York district from the organization, thereby hastening the Knights of Labor's demise. Friedrich Engels was critical of the SLP and referred to it as "the decay of the specifically German party in America" in 1890. The year 1890 has long been regarded as a watershed by the SLP as it marked the date when the organization came under the influence of Daniel De Leon . A native of

7040-503: The group, Sozialistischen Arbeiter-Partei). There was an upsurge of support for the new organization, reflected in the proliferation of the socialist press. Between 1876 and 1877, no fewer than 24 newspapers were established which either directly or indirectly supported the SLP. Eight of these were English-language publications, including one daily, while 14 were in German, including seven dailies. Two more papers were published in Czech and Swedish, respectively. Just two years later, in

7150-405: The hands of loyalists to Morris Hillquit . The party's revolutionary socialist Left Wing was left to find other vehicles for its ideas, such as the monthly magazine published by Charles H. Kerr , the International Socialist Review as well as a small handful of weekly papers. Despite the Call's importance to the American socialist movement and to later historians of American radicalism as

7260-521: The historian Bernard Johnpoll notes, the SLP which Daniel De Leon joined in 1890 differed little from the organization which had been born at the end of the 1870s as it was largely a German-language organization located in an English-speaking country. Just 17 of the party's 77 branches used English as their basic language while only two members of the party's governing National Executive Committee spoke English fluently. The arrival of an erudite, well-read and multilingual university lecturer with English fluency

7370-424: The ideas of a popular anti-socialist priest, Thomas Gasson , were later gathered into pamphlet form as Father Gassoniana. Following the death of Daniel DeLeon in 1914, the editorial helm of The People was turned over to Edmund Seidel , an advocate of merger between the Socialist Labor Party with the rival Socialist Party of America. The proposition was controversial within both organizations and such unification

7480-416: The late 20th century, The People moved from a weekly to a monthly production cycle. In 2003, the paper began to be published every other month, finally terminating in print form effective with the issue of March–April 2008. Thus ended a print run of 117 years — by far the longest continuous run of any socialist or communist publication in the history of American radicalism. A short-lived effort to revitalize

7590-405: The leading national union of the day. A decade later, the SLP retained a faith in the established trade union organizations to conduct their own affairs along a generally socialist course. In each issue of The People during 1891 the weekly affairs of the New York Central Labor Federation, the New York Central Labor Union, the Brooklyn Central Labor Federation, the Brooklyn Central Labor Union and

7700-415: The long-running Milwaukee Leader , which launched in 1911. The daily papers of the Socialist Party were dominated ideologically by the organization's dominant "constructive socialist" alliance, with the Chicago Daily Socialist in the hands of editor A. M. Simons , the Milwaukee Leader under the general editor control of party founder and U.S. Congressman Victor L. Berger , and the Call firmly in

7810-444: The mid-1960s. The SLP experienced another increase in support in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but then subsequently declined at a fast rate with the party last nominating a candidate for president in 1976. In 2008, the party closed its national office and the party's newspaper The People ceased publications in 2011. The party advocates "socialist industrial unionism ", the belief in a fundamental transformation of society through

7920-521: The mischief-making, scatterbrained reformers and 'labor fakirs' or you were against them. You either agreed on the necessity of uncompromising revolutionary tactics or you did not, and those falling into the latter category were automatically expendable as far as the Socialist Labor Party was concerned. The Socialist Labor Party advocated a two-pronged attack against capitalism, including both economic and political components—trade unions and electoral campaigns. The SLP ran candidates under its own name for

8030-472: The name of the party and eliminating the position of National Secretary to allow the form of decentralization favored by the anarchists. The issue of violence proved an insurmountable barrier to unity between the SLP and the anarchist movement and as Paul Grottkau, Alexander Jonas and their co-thinkers began to again forcefully espouse the Marxist point of view in 1884, the SLP began to rebound. In March 1884,

8140-410: The national vote. The main ideological principle of the SLP is revolutionary industrial unionism (also known as "socialist industrial unionism"). New York Call The New York Call was a socialist daily newspaper published in New York City from 1908 through 1923. The Call was the second of three English-language dailies affiliated with the Socialist Party of America , following

8250-601: The next year when Marxist Paul Grottkau was forced by the anarchists to resign as editor of the Chicago daily, the Arbeiter Zeitung. In his place August Spies was installed, a man later executed as part of the anti-anarchist repression which followed the Haymarket affair of May 1886. After a brief honeymoon period in the late 1870s had run its course, the SLP saw the departure of most of its English-speaking members. The party's English-language organ, Bulletin of

8360-529: The organization, although in Chicago Albert Parsons and G.A. Schilling maintained an active English-speaking section. In 1877, the Workingmen's Party met at Newark, New Jersey in a convention which changed the name of the organization to the Socialist Labor Party (generally rendered in English throughout the 1880s as "Socialistic Labor Party", a more stilted rendition of the German name of

8470-507: The organization. The party's German-speaking majority were served by a privately owned daily, the New Yorker Volkszeitung (New York People's News), which first saw print in 1878. The SLP's English-speaking membership atrophied during the first half of the 1880s and the organization had no official English paper for several years. Instead, the organization launched and briefly maintained an official organ in German, Der Sozialist (The Socialist), published in New York City from 1885 to 1887. It

8580-468: The pages of The People on January 7, 1900. In addition to translations by DeLeon of the so-called Marxist classics, new speeches and writings by DeLeon himself were published, such as The Burning Question of Trade Unionism (1904) and Flashlights of the Amsterdam Congress (1906). A sharply critical and at times venomous rhetorical tone was maintained in the pages of The People against

8690-421: The paper would be printed in the evenings and would handle its own distribution. The paper continued to be distributed outside of New York by first class mail at this time. At a meeting announcing the decision, Ervin was asked about the paper's attitude towards the U. S. Government and the war. He said that his criticism of the war was not to be understood as criticism of the government. In particular, Ervin told

8800-609: The party who wanted the group to focus more on organizing workers formed the International Labor Union . Members were not barred from belonging to both, but there was still some animosity between the two organizations. Amidst economic crisis and factional squabbling, membership in the SLP plummeted. As the 1870s drew to a close, the Socialistic Labor Party could count about 2,600 members—with at least one estimate substantially lower. The WPUS

8910-446: The party's candidate in 1900 Joseph Maloney received 0.29% of the popular vote nationwide. The latter's run was also the first time the SLP candidate was eclipsed by another socialist as Eugene Debs ran for the first time for the Socialist Party that year and received 0.6% of the national popular vote. Although SLP presidential candidates would go on to get higher vote totals in the mid-20th century, they would never again surpass 0.25% of

9020-496: The perceived opponents and rivals of the SLP. In 1911 a series of 30 articles were published in the paper's pages analyzing the day-to-day activities of Victor L. Berger , elected as the first Socialist to the U.S. Congress in the fall of the previous year. These articles were later collected in pamphlet form in a tract entitled Berger's Hit and Misses. Similarly, a series of 19 articles by DeLeon in The People written against

9130-408: The post until his death in May 1914. DeLeon proved to be a highly effective editor of the 4-page weekly, contributing a stream of articles which aggressively excoriated purported systemic defects of capitalism , while expounding the benefits of the socialist system. DeLeon's consistent and confrontational leftism in the pages of the party weekly soon propelled him to a position of high authority among

9240-456: The powerful National Secretary of the organization. Following Johnson's retirement in February 1938, Emil Teichert took over as editor of The People on a temporary basis. A membership referendum vote was held in 1938 to elect a new permanent editor for the paper, pitting Teichert against Eric Hass , one of the party's National Organizers who had recently completed journalism course work at

9350-607: The publication as an on-line quarterly followed, commencing in the Summer of 2008 and ending in the fall of 2011, at which time the publication ceased publication indefinitely. The People remains readily available to activists and scholars of labor history and radical politics on microfilm , the master negative of which is held by the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison . The organization published

9460-464: The rest of his life. De Leon never assumed the formal role of head of the organization, National Secretary, but was always recognized—by supporters and detractors alike—as the leader of the SLP through his tight editorial control of the official party press. While increasing the exposure and popularity of the organization among the American-born during his editorial tenure, De Leon proved to be

9570-429: The rising star of the SLP's firmament, a university lecturer recently converted to Marxism named Daniel DeLeon . Although Sanial's leaving was ostensibly related to failing eyesight and other physical difficulties associated with old age, few active in the party doubted that the actual reason for Sanial's removal related to a simple need to seat the energetic and intense DeLeon in the editorial chair. DeLeon would remain at

9680-500: The socialist ideas expressed by Edward Bellamy in his extremely popular novel of the day, Looking Backward (1888). De Leon was also deeply influenced by The Co-operative Commonwealth by Laurence Gronlund . The failings of the Nationalist Club movement to develop a viable program or strategy for winning political power left De Leon searching for an alternative. This he found in the scientific determinism underlying

9790-558: The socialist movement fleeing the crackdown on radicalism launched with the Anti-Socialist Laws of 1878. This influx of new German members, coming during a time of low ebb of the English-speaking membership, extended Germanic influence in the SLP. Excluded from the voting booth by their lack of citizenship status, many of the newcomers had little use for electoral politics. An SLP German militia sued on Second Amendment grounds to keep and bear arms in Chicago parades. However,

9900-417: The time being. The National Convention of 1889 upheld the policy of political action and the SLP was again active in the New York elections of 1890. In 1891, the party's electoral effort was led by the candidacy of Daniel De Leon for Governor of New York . De Leon polled a respectable 14,651 votes in the losing effort. The party nominated its first candidate for President of the United States in 1892,

10010-522: The wake of an economic crisis, not one of the privately owned English newspapers had survived. In 1878, the party established its own English-language paper, The National Socialist, but managed to keep the publication alive only one year. The year 1878 saw the establishment of a more enduring newspaper: the German-language New Yorker Volkszeitung ( New York People's News ). The Volkszeitung included material by

10120-597: The widely circulated New Yorker Volkszeitung. These insurgents expressed critical support for the AF of L and its unions, seeking to radicalize these through the tactic of boring from within . In July 1899 matters came to a head with the anti-DeLeon insurgents of New York calling a special meeting at which the offices of Executive Secretary, the members of the National Executive Committee, and editorship of The People were declared vacant. There followed

10230-655: The workers against the militia in a strike. ... The arms-bearing tactics were opposed by the Executive Committee of the SLP, the Secretary of which was Philip van Patten. A fight ensued between the Verbote , which was the weekly edition of the Arbeiter Zeitung , of Chicago, and the Labor Bulletin , the official party organ which Patten edited. The SLP was electorally successfully in 1878 and 1879 with

10340-421: The writings of Karl Marx . In the fall of 1890, De Leon abandoned his academic career to devote himself full-time to the SLP. He was engaged in the spring of 1891 as the party's "National Lecturer", traveling the entire country from coast to coast to speak on the SLP's behalf. He was also named the SLP's candidate for Governor of New York in the fall of that same year, gathering a respectable 14,651 votes. As

10450-503: Was already in steep decline toward the start of the 1890s, when it won effective control of the New York District Assembly of the K of L in 1893. In that same year, socialist delegates to the governing General Assembly of the K of L were largely responsible for the defeat of Terence Powderly and his replacement by J. R. Sovereign as Grand Master Workman, the chief executive officer of the organization. So great

10560-493: Was also a linguist with few peers, possessing fluency in Spanish, German, Dutch, Latin, French, English and ancient Greek; and a reading knowledge of Portuguese, Italian and modern Greek. Upon graduation, De Leon immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City . There he made the acquaintance of a group of Cubans who sought the liberation of their native land and edited their Spanish-language newspaper. De Leon paid

10670-605: Was among the American radical movement was experienced by the rival anarchist organization, the International Working People's Association (IWPA), also sometimes referred to as the International Workingmen's Association. A split between the electorally oriented SLP and the revolution-minded IWPA, which took with it a good portion of the SLP's left-wing, including such prominent leaders as the English-speaking orator Albert Parsons and

10780-520: Was based upon local "Sections" coordinated by a loose National Executive Committee based in New York City. It was not until 1889 that any move was made to establish intermediate state levels of organization. The SLP did attempt to play an influence in the existing labor movement during the decade of the 1880s. As early as 1881, National Secretary Philip Van Patten joined the Order of the Knights of Labor ,

10890-464: Was edited by Algernon Lee , assisted by Horace Traubel , Joshua Wanhope, and others. Even before the split there had been an effort by New York members of the SLP to establish an English-language daily newspaper. In November 1900 a meeting was held in Clarendon Hall on East 13th Street and it determined to revive an essentially defunct organization founded in 1886 for the purpose of starting

11000-479: Was maintained for decades. Ultimately the DeLeon regulars won rights to the name of the paper in the courts and the dissident edition of The People was supplanted in April 1901 by the establishment in New York City of The Worker — lineal forerunner of the New York Call . That same year the anti-DeLeon dissidents of the so-called "Springfield Social Democratic Party" became one of the primary components of

11110-459: Was named as editor of the publication. Heber Blankenhorn became managing editor, Evans Clark business manager, and Ed Sullivan sportswriter. This effort to stabilize the daily newspaper's funding was unsuccessful, however, and the New York Leader was terminated just six weeks later. New York socialists, facing the prospect of no English-language paper in the city for the first time in more than three decades immediately met and made plans for

11220-473: Was not a petty tyrant who desired power for power's sake. Rather, he was a dogmatic idealist, devoted brain and soul to a cause, a zealot who could not tolerate heresy or backsliding, a doctrinaire who would make no compromise with principles. For this strong-willed man, this late nineteenth-century Grand Inquisitioner of American socialism, there was no middle ground. You were either a disciplined and undeviating Marxist or no socialist at all. You were either with

11330-603: Was not at this time sharply drawn in the Socialist organizations, in spite of the fact of their being opposites. Both being critics and denouncers of the present system, however, they were able to work together. As a result of the brutalities of the militia and regulars in the railway strikes of 1877 , a new plan was devised by the Chicago agitators. This found expression in the Lehr und Wehr Verein (teaching and defense society), an armed and drilled body of workmen pledged to protect

11440-453: Was not to be. Seidel was replaced in 1918 by Olive M. Johnson , a consistent opponent of the SPA in the tradition of DeLeon. Johnson was re-elected to the post by the membership of the SLP at its conventions of 1920, 1924, 1928, 1932, and 1936 without opposition. Johnson retired from the editorial chair in 1938, following a case of tuberculosis which sapped her strength. Some historians believe her to have been forced out by Arnold Petersen ,

11550-526: Was not until a privately owned weekly, The Workmen's Advocate, debuted in New Haven, Connecticut by the Trades Council of New Haven on September 8, 1883, that the SLP's English-speaking members again had access to a party-oriented newspaper in their own language. It would be this publication from which The People would emerge. Volume 1, number 1 of The People was unveiled on April 5, 1891, as

11660-451: Was produced. Raffles were conducted, amusements held, food and drink sold, and several thousand dollars were raised for the future English daily, which was planned to be revisit the name New York Daily Globe on a permanent basis. This idea came to naught, however, when another New York paper changed its name to the Globe early in the spring of 1904. Suggestions were made for a new name for

11770-422: Was remarkable as the first such effort for English-speaking radicals. Editorial offices were established at 6 Park Place in New York City, in a building subsequently removed and replaced by the massive Woolworth Building . Veteran journalist George Gordon was named the first editor of the publication and former Socialist Party Executive Secretary William Mailly the paper's managing editor. Other key members of

11880-565: Was seen as a great triumph for the SLP organization. In the spring of 1891, De Leon was set to work as the National Organizer for the SLP. He pioneered for an English-speaking organization on a cross-country six-week tour to the West Coast and back in April and May. In 1892, De Leon was elected editor of The Weekly People , the SLP's English-language official organ. He retained this important position without interruption for

11990-541: Was the SLP's influence that the newly elected Sovereign promised to appoint a member of the party as editor of the Journal of the Knights of Labor. When he recanted on this pledge, a bitter feud erupted, ending with the December 1895 General Assembly refusing to seat de facto SLP party leader Daniel De Leon as a delegate from District Assembly 49, resulting in an outright break of the two organizations and withdrawal of

12100-487: Was unable to field its own ticket in the 1876 presidential election and its members supported Peter Cooper and the Greenback Party instead. A 44-member delegation from the SLP was seated at the 1880 Greenback National Convention . The SLP ended its participation in electoral politics for a decade after the 1880 election. The years 1880 and 1881 saw a new influx of political refugees from Germany, activists in

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